The Headset

Her friend would push the envelope of her sense of safety - her sense of control. This is the one she trusts most, the situationship she would turn to knowing it was a safe space. He has, for some years, held a job qualifying harbor pilots for the immense responsibility of steering large capital ships into urban portlands. This work requires such finesse and complex input that the entire body is committed to the task through a form of telekinesis.

A headset and bands on the extremities interact to place motor control of the nervous system in touch with the thrust vectoring, braking, levitation, and orientation of enormous lumbering craft. However, to the untrained, it's feedback functions can subsume the novice user's handle on their own bodily control. Tonight, he's brought an older model to her apartment to give her the chance to experience this loss of control herself.

Wearing the gear is no more remarkable than donning old hockey equipment - heavy, used, inert. Once it's connected to power the initial snap felt in the brain is brief as it awaits a data link. She turned her head and slowly blinked as she observed the sensation of being a little outside of her body. He asked, "are you ready?" She only nodded in reply, but he needed real confirmation. He looked her in the eyes and whispered, "ready?" She said faintly, "yes."

Activating the gear first produces an ear ringing, but as she felt it take over her mind, it went far beyond the five senses. She felt as though her body filled a spatial margin perhaps a meter around her - so diffuse that her relationship to her own body was vague. Her vision was occluded by geometry and numbers only meaningful to a highly trained harbor pilot or their trainer. Her mouth fell open and her friend dabbed the drool that fell from her tongue. She could feel her body feel what touched it, but the traffic jam of data crossing her mind meant she was only a passive observer. She wanted this: to feel - but not think, to be safe - but not in control.